Where we are going
by Cossacks250
Summary: Just a quickie about how one of the characters views the current major operation taking place in their country.


**Hey fellow FF readers and writers. This is just a quickie about a Hetalia character and their take on a major event currently taking place in the Middle East. Enjoy!**

Sand, be it on the ground, inside your house or on your roof or car, or even in your face; it never leaves your sight. I mean, literally, it never left my sight unless you craned your neck up. Then there was only complete blue sky dominating what was above with a harsh blazing sun bearing down on you like something out of hell (it even made you feel like that's where you were). Normally, people would complain as if their lives depended on it about the unbearable heat, the sandstorms and the unquestionable thirst one would feel when faced with the weather here. Even me, an Arab, struggled with it sometimes. Before now, I would have been sitting in the shade and waiting for rain to come over the area and give me and everyone else here some respite from the heat. Even my neighbour Syria (whom I have no doubt you have already met) finds it difficult on occasion.

 _Or did. I still don't know if she's alive or not given …_

I push such thoughts from my mind and gaze out across the great expanse of desert before me as I stood on a small hill, the yellow/gold colour of the sand glowing brightly under the sun. The bleached stone blocks of the buildings in a nearby village almost blended in with the ground as they too seemed to emit a light of their own. Some areas, however, were overcast with pillars of smoke and far off to my left, which would be the south and going towards Tikrit, Baghdad and other areas around there, a small but thick black cloud hung low in the sky. _No doubt another blown oil well._

Now, my fellow readers, you will be wondering; why the desert again when we already read it six months earlier? Why this talk about oil wells and smoke? What is this about?

I shall enlighten you. You see, scattered around me are several convoys of Iraqi army vehicles, many of them Humvees and armoured personnel carriers, and around them are soldiers. Some were standing in groups, talking to their fellow comrades in arms; others standing idle and smoking and gazing out over the desert as well, watching as every now and then a puff of smoke erupted on the horizon. At one point, the noise of an explosion rolled across the landscape. In a normal situation, all heads would be turning to the source with everyone debating what on earth was causing it to happen. Here, however, nobody even batted an eyelid. They just carried on talking or smoking or checking their weapons, ready to move on.

 _Now do you have an idea of where we are?_

I'm sure you do; everyone should have at least heard about what's going on now. Northern Iraq, especially around Mosul, is a very dangerous place right now. Then again, it has been for a long time. A _very_ long time.

I still remember when it all started only two years ago. You might; no, I _know_ you are thinking ' _That's not_ very _long ago'._ Truthfully, yes it wasn't but that's what it felt like to me; it felt like two centuries had passed, an age of prosperity giving over to darkness and misery. That is how I had experienced it, and what a horrific one it was.

It started when towns across Iraq began to fall to a group that carried that accursed black banner the world has come to know very well, as it did with the Swastika eighty years earlier. I and others in the country's government were alarmed at the arrival of this group into our territory, especially in places like Fallujah, a town that was quite close to Baghdad. But, like the fools we were, the fools we had been made into by ourselves and outsiders, we turned the other way and focused more on other problems, blatantly ignoring this growing threat within our own borders. Its popularity was growing in neighbouring Syria, where the civil war was raging and sometimes spilled over to us, but we responded with sheer complacency. _Ignore it and it will go away, or at least diminish over time._

What bullshit we told ourselves then, _I_ told myself then. Absolute bullshit!

And then came June 2014, and everything changed.

Like a desert version of a German Blitzkrieg, they swarmed out of Syria and ploughed across the deserts of North Iraq and into Mosul. One side fell very quickly and chaos ensued. People fled the city by the thousands; Christians, Yazidis, Shias, everyone who feared these new arrivals as if they carried the very aura of death about them (which they did technically if you think about it). And what was more, the army with all their powerful weaponry, all their soldiers that vastly outnumbered those of these attackers.

They simply turned and ran, leaving all of that equipment behind and their zeal in the wind that was swept up in the wake of their retreat, all for their adversaries, _my_ enemies, to take. And before we knew it, this group that called itself the Islamic State, or ISIS or ISIL or IS (more names than one of Japan's old Godzilla's film titles!) declared a Caliphate, one that they prophesised would swarm over the Middle East and trample its enemies.

For a while, that was what I thought would happen. They carried on advancing in all directions across the country. North and north east into Kurdistan, east towards Iran and, especially, south towards Baghdad and Basra, taking scores of cities, towns and villages as they went. It was only when they suffered some setbacks outside Sinjar and across other areas of Kurdistan and around Tikrit and Baghdad and that the outside world became involved in the fighting by launching airstrikes against them that the tide began to turn in our favour a bit more. A relief for me as well as the millions across the south of Baghdad.

Since then, I had been fighting on the frontline with the Iraqi Army and militia groups in a slow campaign to push them back. I had fought at Tikrit, Fallujah, Ramadi, a bit at Rutbah and at Qayyarah earlier this summer. Those who hated ISIS, be they Shia militias, Iraqi citizens, Sunni tribesmen, Kurds and people from Europe and America and elsewhere across the world, had been alongside me. They all fought well. Many had died; many more were left crippled or injured, particularly when Ramadan came this year.

 _Many innocents, taken by the barbarity of a group claiming divine leadership._ My thoughts drifted to the relatives of those killed in the bombing in Baghdad this July. _And_ the many before and since then. How people could do this to other people … I just did not know.

I am momentarily snapped out of my thoughts when a nearby commander, a short, stocky man with a thick black beard and dressed in dirty attire, began shouting out instructions for everyone to get ready. We were going to be moving on in the next few minutes or so, right back into battle. _Wonderful_. _Well, I better get myself ready._

I go to walk over to one of the nearby Humvees when the sound of a jet passing overhead makes me and several others look up. After searching the sky for a moment, I catch sight of it. Sunlight was gleaming off its wings; the noise of its engines filling the air like the sound of a train going by and a small shape that looked like a bomb attached on its underside. On the bottom of the wings, I could just about make out the USAF insignia. A moment of gladness comes to me as it flies overhead in the direction of Mosul. In the next few minutes, another loud BANG would fill the air and a lot of people were going to be dead.

 _Oddly, I pity whoever it will hit, even ISIS to an extent, and especially the innocents who are being held captive against their will by them._

Of course, you'll think that's very strange but when you've had to experience countless bombings by the same air force many times in the past with scores of people being killed by each device of death, you would feel the same. But those who fight for ISIS, they chose this route so they should expect nothing less. _Heartless,_ yeah I admit it is but … That's what it's come down to when you fight people like this.

Anyway, enough pondering! Time to get moving. I walk over to one of the nearby Humvees and, after making sure everyone is in, I open the door and climb in, relieved to have a bit of shade after standing out in the sun for so long. The driver, after getting into his seat, turns to me and jokingly asks if it is hot enough outside.

 _Na'am_ I reply. _Yes._ And share a laugh with him.

As he starts up the vehicle, I glance out the window, my eyes resting on the place where I had been standing moments ago, my mind once again falling into pondering. What was going to become of my homeland after this operation? And the people who live where we are going? Their families, friends and neighbours? Would the communities that have stood for centuries remain or shatter into oblivion in the wake of a new, and hopefully improved, Iraq?

 _I can only hope_ I mentally tell myself as I briefly look up to see another jet zoom overhead in the direction of Mosul, no doubt about to drop another bomb on ISIS positions there.

The car starts with a jolt. The engine hums loudly and then driver moves us forward down the hill, leaving a cloud of dust and sand in our wake for the other military vehicles as they too begin to move after us.

As I said, sand gets _everywhere._ And tonight, and for many nights coming, I will be sleeping on it.


End file.
